GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Ahead of the arrival of the high-level Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Friday, CARICOM Chairman and Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley said the National Recount of the March 2020 Elections must be credible and transparent; that nothing else will suffice.
“The Community calls on all concerned to ensure a credible and transparent recount process in order to provide legitimacy to any government which would be sworn in as a result,” Prime Minister Mottley said in a statement, hours before the delegation landed at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at Ogle in a chartered Trans Guyana Airways plane.
Now that the high-level mission is in Guyana, the CARICOM Chair said the process must be completed without further delay. With the team’s arrival, it is expected that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) will move to gazette an order for the recount to be initiated.
The three-member delegation, comprising Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies Cynthia Barrow-Giles; Commissioner of the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission John Jarvis; and Supervisor of St Vincent Electoral Commission Sylvester King, will scrutinise the electoral process.
Barrow-Giles was a member of the high-level team which came to Guyana in March to participate in a scheduled recount, which had to be aborted after GECOM encountered a number of legal challenges. Prime Minister Mottley noted that the other members of the initial team were unavailable for the present mission. However, both Jarvis and King formed part of CARICOM’s Electoral Observer Mission that observed the March 2 Elections.
The three-member delegation arrived at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at around 15:00 hrs, and was welcomed by the CARICOM Secretariat’s Assistant Secretary-General for Foreign and Community Relations, Ambassador Colin Granderson. Health officials and other CARICOM representatives were also present at the time of the delegation’s arrival. CARICOM, in announcing the team’s arrival, expressed thanks to the Government of Canada for the generous support it has provided the initiative. See full article in GUYANA CHRONICLE at http://guyanachronicle.com/2020/05/02/recount-closer
